How can you tell Mom you’ve become a sexual adult without disappointing her? How can you ask her for birth control? How can you disclose being sexually active? And is it okay to use her sex toy eithout asking?

In November 2009, a young mother of four was given a life saving, emergency abortion from doctors at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona. Bishop Thomas Olmstead of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix called it “immoral” and is now threatening the hospital president in an effort to make sure they never save a pregnant woman’s life again.

Working in the global reproductive health arena, I think about the profound grief my own mother experienced having lost a child and then about the millions of women around the world who face this sort of grief as a part of their daily lives because they lack access to reproductive health care. But we can make a change this Mother’s Day.